The only time that my attention seems to really focus is when there is trouble, if I’m out of money or if someone really needs my help, then as soon as the danger has passed my mind is back to hopping and skipping through the day.  It is not an entirely unpleasant way to exist but it does make it difficult to make any real change in your life.

When I think of how I have grown to love working with the web it really is no wonder, it is the perfect playground for my childish attention span.  If the internet itself is a drug then social media is like mainlining it straight to the vains.  It is like having hundreds of people in the room with you tapping you on the shoulder saying ‘look at this, look at this’.

Recently I’ve been trying to cement my learning (picked up sporadically here and there) of front end development and create a set of starter templates that I could use to begin any new website.  I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t do anything else until I’d finished them.  Today I finished them, but boy was it a battle along the way.

How I learned to focus on one thing at a time

Step 1 – stop giving yourself a hard time

If you give yourself a hard time for getting distracted you can stop right now.  Some people are more prone to distraction than others, some people are better cooks than others, there is no failure inherent here, it’s just the way things are.

Step 2 – identify the things that tempt your attention

When you know what your weaknesses are you can begin to protect yourself from their influence.  The obvious are email, phone and social media, the less obvious may be your own imagination.

Step 3 – see what you do and gently guide your attention back

When I was learning to mediate this was the advise I was given, when you notice your attention wondering, don’t get angry or frustrated, just acknowledge what has happened and come back to the focus point. The more we are able to do this the more we get to know the things that tempt our attention and the better prepared we can be.

But what about other people

Other people are by far the biggest sources of distraction and by far the hardest to control. Sometimes I wish I could freeze frame life, like pausing a movie, everyone else would stay still and I could run around getting everything done before life starts throwing things at me once more.  I think we all feel like that at times, whether it’s coming from bosses or family or friends, people are always asking for our time.  How do we deal with that?

I think sometimes it is fair to ask people to wait. People love to have our full attention, they deserve it but, if we are polite and explain that we are trying to focus on finishing something important  and that they will have our full attention as soon as it is done, most of the time that will be enough.  If the situation demands your immediate attention then that is ok too. Just stop what your doing, give them your full attention and when they no longer need you return to your task, just like in the meditation.

He wasn’t a popular guy amongst his peers but he was a big hit with the bosses because he talked a really, really good game, he wasn’t the smartest by far, or the most experienced but he somehow talked his way into leading major projects.

He was around 80% confidence and 20% skill and was working with a group of people who only respected the skill but that didn’t seem to alter his confidence one little bit.

Who are these people with no self doubt? Are they not afraid of people discovering they are full of hot air?  Do they genuinely believe  they are what they think they are or do they know their limits but know that confidence will give them all the smoke and mirrors they need to get where they want to go?

It got me thinking about all the people out there with amazing talents but with no ‘aptitude’ or tolerance for self promotion/exaggeration.  How do you market yourself or your business in a truthful way and still stand a chance amongst the charmers, the deluded, the confidence tricksters, the spinners and the liars? Is there a place for humbleness in business?

…to be continued

I know that my self education must have some big patchy holes in it and when I realiesd you could do modules at the local uni without having to take a full degree I signed up for:  Web Design and Authoring, Web Development and Marketing Concepts.  I was also tempted by a programming course but I really need to narrow my field of focus rather than keep expanding it all the time or I will be the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none.

I’ll keep you posted on the courses as they get started!

Over the last few months I’ve come across a few articles about standing desks. The concept planted itself at the back of my mind, a tiny seed that has begun to grow and grow over time. I kept pushing the idea aside thinking it would be too much of an upheaval to go out and buy a new desk just on the off chance. I live in a microscopic flat, there is barely the room for two chairs nevermind two desks, however, after a lazier than usual weekend spent trying to fight off the cold, moving between the sofa and the desk and few places in between, the lethargy and achyness of all that sitting propelled me to take action.

So, I cleared the kitchen counter (which is at waist height) and set up my computer and keyboard. This post is the first piece of work at my temporary standing desk so it is too early to give too much feedback. My initial thoughts are that I may need something a tiny bit higher, but other than that typing feels so much more comfortable than sitting down as the shoulders aren’t forced up in anyway. I also can’t resist the temptation to bop about to the music (Interpol).

Apart for the benefits of sitting less and getting the blood flowing more, I’m hoping that the standing desk will improve my efficiency, and stop me just spacing out in my chair aimlessly clicking on things, checking facebook a million times a day but never leaving an update. I want to get to the point where I come to my desk to do specific pieces of work, more focused and more deliberate.

I do read a lot on the web and have a pretty comprehensive google reader subscription list. For those reads I’m happy to be in the bath, or snuggled up on the sofa with my ipad. Yes I do take my ipad into the bath, living on the edge is something I’ve gotten used to where baths are concerned, I love baths and I love technology and I’m not prepared to choose between the too!

Further reading

Can’t Stand to Sit Too Long? There’s a Desk for That
Stand up while you read this
Is sitting a lethal activity

Content strategy is a cyclical process throughout the life span of the web project. It encompasses ongoing publishing and content maintenance strategies. Kristina Halvorson from Brain Traffic suggests that content strategy covers many content related specialism:

• Editorial strategy defines the guidelines by which all online content is governed
• Web writing is the practice of writing useful, usable content specifically intended for online publication.
• Metadata strategy identifies the type and structure of metadata, also known as “data about data” (or content).
• Search engine optimisation is the process of editing and organising the content on a page or across a website (including metadata) to increase its potential relevance to specific search engine keywords.
• Content management strategy defines the technologies needed to capture, store, deliver, and preserve an organisation’s content.
• Content channel distribution strategy defines how and where content will be made available to users.

Source: The Discipline of Content Strategy

I’d be tempted to add information architecture into that mix too. Although an established field in itself, and one that straddles both design and content, if you only have budget for one content specialist, or a very small team, they will be responsible for all of these areas under the umbrella of content strategy. Unfortunately dispite the mission critical nature of website content it remains the most underfunded and overlooked aspect of most website development projects.

Web content is:

• Blog posts
• Articles and summary descriptions (any kind of text)
• Photos, graphics and illustrations
• Video and audio
• Rss and social feeds
• Navigation and embedded links
• Date, category, author and keyword metadata

• I am a very curious person and find something interesting in most things.
• I am also plagued by enthusiasm; I find myself getting passionately immersed in things.

I know you are scoffing thinking that these are in fact characteristics I should be enjoying about myself, and I do enjoy them, they are the greatest source of enjoyment I have other than the kind I get from being with people I love. However they are also insidious attention thieves, pulling me this way and that, getting me excited, making me loose myself in wonderful things, things that aren’t in the plan – dammit.

There is of course a time for wonder and following your bliss and all of that that but sometimes you just want to start something, work hard on it and finish it and feel all warm and complete inside. That is a very difficult thing for someone with enthusiastic curiosity disorder, or Maggpie disorder as I sometimes refer to it – shinny thing… where… off I go!

Training the monkey

I know what your thinking, I just need some discipline, a strategy, a plan… well today’s the day to start training this monkey. My first experiment is to create a set time to do all the little things that fall through the cracks as I wonder about, head in a dream. Mondays are now Admin days. These are the rules.

• No meetings to be booked, or long lunches for that matter.
• No project work.
• No spending 3 hours researching something I read about in a blog.
• No reading blogs, or other kind of information input.

Things that I will be doing:

• Replying to emails
• calling people back
• bringing databases up to date with contacts, accounts and any other kind of tracking data and
• check stats and send out reports.

It sounds like a super dull day I know but I’m going to focus on that, rarely felt, feeling of order I’m going to get come 6pm. If it works there may be more specialty days to come.

Whether you are a new business owner looking to create your first website, or a project leader in a large organisation managing a redevelopment, you must have a deep understanding of your purpose as a business, your business personality and your long term goals.

Purpose

Quite simply the answer to the question, why are you in business? If you’ve ever had to write a mission statement for a business plan you should have formulated a concise answer to this question. If you haven’t now is the time to do it. Forget about cliches and dig for the personal, to be rich, or the best in the world are generalisations that are simply to vague to give you any kind of guiding focus.

Values

What kind of company, or organisation are you, what is your business personality? Are you corporate and trustworthy, or are you open and inclusive, do you value innovation, or user engagement, is loyalty your guiding principle?

When we were first putting together Post Creative we sat round the kitchen table with a few postit pads and began by thinking about some companies we loved. On a postit we wrote down attributes we admired about those companies, what made us love them. Then we began to think about the kind of attributes we would like to be remembered for as a company. We wrote down as many as we could and then we decided to narrow it down to 5, 5 values that we would embedded in every product, practice and service we supplied. Give it a go and see what you come up with.

Vision

Vision can be the most difficult to think about because it seems so distant as to be intangible. What will you business be like in 5 years or 10? How big will it be, where will it be located, will the products or services have changes, how will your life have changed as a result. It is just guess work I know, but unless you have a sense of where you would like to go, it is very difficult to take the meaningful steps that will take you there.

Why are these 3 things so important to your web project?

• The purpose of your website is to achieve your business objectives.
• Knowing your values is to find your voice, your style, your brand. Your values will guide you in all aspects of your business especially in communicating with your clients and customers.
• Your vision will provide the route map for how you website will develop over the coming years, always in line with your purpose and values and always heading towards your vision.